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I've got two 6509's and they act as the core in a collapsed core setup. I've got about 30 VLANs and I make some primary on one switch and some primary on the other to offset the load otherwise all routing traffic is handled by one MSFC on the one switch.

I have the 4 SUP's ethertrunked over their GIG connections to link them together (4gig full duplex). All of the Sup's GIG interfaces are active even though 2 of the SUP's sit in standby mode.

I have a similar setup and would like to bounce some ideas off of you. I have been scouring CCO for any tidbit of info that would answer my questions but cannot seem to get the detail that I want. If you dont mind talking you can email me at [email protected]. Thanks.

Starting with Cat OS 5.3 (i believe)...Cisco supports features such as Highavailability and Redundancy. You can run the MSFCs in DRM (dual route r mode) or SRM (single router mode). In DRM, both MSFCs have diff configs, and they run HSRP between each other, which means, you will need separate IPs for the physical interfaces, plus a third IP for the virtual HSRP address.

In SRM, one MSFC will be active, and the second MSFC, syncs its configuration from the active MSFC. This MSFC will take over, when the active MSFC fails. SRM, is much easier and less complex to implement. Also SRM saves upon IP addresses.

We elected to use DRM in our environment with the same configs. In the event that we encounter a nachi occurrence again or any production impact event we just shutdown the vlan affected on the primary router and quarantine it on the secondary router. Most of the Vlan on the primary would be isolated and we can do all non-production impact related analysis on affected vlan on the secondary router.

All of the vlan are in standby mode while the affected vlan will be in active mode in the secondary router.

Cisco TACs recommendation is to configure the MSFCs in Single Router Mode and run HSRP between the two 6500 chassis. Even though HSRP will work between 4 routers in the HSRP group it was designed to work between two routers.